Q: “In the situation described above, what do the ChaRM think is an example of a contemporary art, today?”
A: “Well, if you can believe it, by them, Picasso is considered a contemporary artist.”
Q: “Nothing since?”
A: “The estates of deceased abstract expressionist and pop art titans define it; as do, perhaps, the very early works, of some still living art ‘legends.’”
Q: “What else?”
A: “Curiously enough, contemporary art is often solely the idea of it and, often, only if it is well expressed by the curator in her show’s catalog.”
Parenthetically, for the the teaching artists, the disparagement of the ChaRM seems an obsession. However, there is a prejudice against academic artists by artists and dealers that shall not be overcome, today.
Therefore, what resistance there is, to the ChaRM, is found in the “trenches.”
And, in the trenches is where Barbara was built to be.
While a cliché, it’s helpful to think of the art world as a river. Its source is the artist; its delta, the dealer. Between the two, the river collects rain and waste waters. Barbara, with Gates pushing her, takes a few turns toward the idea that what started the river rolling should reach the sea.
Q: “What brought Gates to this point?”
A: “It came at a price. He began studying the subject, in earnest, when he was eight. By the time he was seventeen, his peers recognized him as something of a contemporary art expert. His childhood was the byproduct of parental neglect and abuse: professionally documented only after the fact. Between the years of eight and seventeen, though, he substituted for his childhood reality, the world he found on the walls of his parents’ home and between the covers of Artforum, Art In America, and Art News. —For more insight, see the who page.— In other words, the artist raised, himself, using the American contemporary art world, of the 1960’s and ‘70’s, as his surrogate parents. The combined good, of that world, however, neither could, would nor should have substituted for what was taken. And, that loss caught up to him. The skepticism that was forged from the juxtaposition of those two worlds, however, developed and fuels Gates’ imagination and work.